


home is people, not a place

by immajustgonnafangirl



Series: Tier One's Kid [2]
Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parent Ash Spenser, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Clay Spenser Whump, Eric Blackburn has a wife fight me, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt Clay Spenser, Hurt/Comfort, I don't think its necessary but we do be careful, I'm doing my best, Injury, Just me and grammarly, Not Beta Read, Protective OMC, Protective Older Brothers, Protective Sonny Quinn, Protective Team, Swearing, The Archive Warning is a precaution, Theres a lot of what they think, blood reference, thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29462121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immajustgonnafangirl/pseuds/immajustgonnafangirl
Summary: Ash says on national television that he has an inside source that is telling him about covert operations. Tier One knows that Clay would never spill to his father. Green Team? Not so much.
Relationships: Bravo Team & Clay Spenser, Brock Reynolds & Clay Spenser, Brock Reynolds & Trent Sawyer, Eric Blackburn & Clay Spenser, Jason Hayes & Clay Spenser, Lisa Davis & Clay Spenser, Ray Perry & Clay Spenser, Sonny Quinn & Clay Spenser, Trent Sawyer & Clay Spenser
Series: Tier One's Kid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165907
Comments: 32
Kudos: 207





	1. Chapter 1

Clay Spencer is rarely off his guard. It’s a hazard to himself and the people around him if he’s not alert. But being on guard all the time is exhausting. That’s why he had his eyes closed in the cage room, cage door ajar and his head leant against his locker. He’d just got back from being spun out with Bravo, a weeklong mission that had meant he’d had to stay awake in 20-hour stints, constantly watching a target house for a man who’d only arrived on the sixth day they’d been there. He’d been in the cage room for around an hour, about 15 minutes after Trent had finished sorting his supplies and gone home, a grumbled order to follow in his footsteps as Trent leaves, looking as bad as Clay did. There was a good chance that Bravo team would sleep for about 25 straight hours.

That’s why – he’d reason to himself in the following months – he hadn’t looked up when the door opened. Why he hadn’t greeted them, because it could be Bravo, Blackburn, Davis, their support team, all have access to the room. His cage is unlocked (why would it be locked? He's on base, home turf, in a restricted access building), so they get the drop on him. The four of them, green team rookies who probably haven’t even met a Tier One operator before, walk in quietly. Clay doesn’t look up, doesn’t question them. He doesn’t see their faces, their names, or the bat that one of them holds. He has his back turned to them, slowly squaring away his bag with the air of someone who needed downtime. He doesn’t see the bat coming, doesn’t have the time to shout out in pain before he’s on the floor.

They drag him into the threshold of his cage, and one of them puts a foot on his chest – right above his pounding heart, ready to burst out of his chest from the adrenaline beginning to pour into him – and two more pairs of hands come down to restrain his arms. His legs kick out uselessly, between the foot pressing down – ow ow ow ow – on his chest and the hands digging into the flesh of his arm, he can’t fight them off. He can only watch through blurry vision, struggling and restrained, as the wooden bat descends onto his chest, right on one of his ribs. The pained groan that echoes out makes one of them laugh and Clay knows that the laugh is going to haunt his dreams.

Clay’s eyesight blacks out and his consciousness leaves him, taking him to a place where he can’t feel his nose break, or the bruises forming on his exhausted body.

* * *

Eric Blackburn knows he is only slightly better off than his team, not that he knows the state of his rookie – of course. Blackburn leaves his debrief, having reported Bravo’s AARs and answered questions until he was dismissed. He can practically feel his bed – and his wife – calling him home. As he leaves the office, he decides to check the cage room. Bravo had looked, for lack of a better word, dead on their feet; and he wouldn’t put it past any of his ~~idiots~~ operators to either curl into a ball on the cage floor or hang a hammock so they could sleep at the base. They were going to give him grey hairs, the lot of them.

He pushes the wooden door open and walks in, blearily looking through the darkness over to the cages, trying to see if there are any hammocks hanging. When he sees none, he rubs at his sore eyes and lets his tired gaze fall to the floor. His eye catches on a shiny patch on the floor, and he fumbles for the light switch on the wall for a few seconds before he manages to find it, figuring that he’d at most need to call for someone to clear whatever Clay had spilt in front of his-

Oh god. Oh god. No no no no no no. Bravo Six lies on the floor of his cage. His head and shoulders both lie past the threshold. His head lies in a puddle of blood, with his face turned away from Eric.

It’s 2am, and god knows when this happened. Any way that Eric mentally spins this, there’s no good outcome. Something happened to Clay while the team wasn’t there. Eric runs the mere feet to where Clay is facing, and what greets him is, put simply, pain. Blood dribbles out of a very broken nose, and a forming bruise spans most of Clay’s jaw, and that’s just what Eric can see. He’s certain that there’s more beneath Clay’s shirt. He falls to his knees in front of Clay’s slack face, his knees breaking the surface tension of the puddle of blood, and he doesn’t pay it any mind, even as it stains his trousers. His hands find their way to Clay’s face, and a tiny bit of tension leeches from his body when he finds the skin warm.

“Clay? Clay! Bravo Six!” His voice increases steadily in volume, as Clay doesn’t show any sign of responding or so much as registering that his commanding officer is trying to ~~wake up please god Clay wake up~~ get his attention. Eric pulls out his phone, thanking something above that he’d remembered to pick it up as he left Bravo’s briefing room. He dials 911 ~~and he ignores the blood staining his fingertips, and his screen, and his trousers, and his skin, and the floor and and and~~ , giving the operator who answers him all the information that he can think of – rattling off his service number and Clay’s, telling the man that he was on a military base, that they needed an ambulance, that Clay had a concussion, that he had already bled a lot. The operator told him that the ambulance would arrive in about 10 minutes. Eric hung up the phone without thinking too much about it.

Alpha Five, a middle eastern man named Jordan Frazier, walks past the open door, and double-takes in a way that Eric would have found comical if not for the fact that he’s kneeling in a puddle of his rookie’s blood. Eric’s eyes bore into Frazier and he barks out an order – praying that Alpha’s operators responded better to the chain of command then his own team did.

“Go to the entrance and direct the ambulance.”. Frazier gets halfway through a salute before processing that there were more important matters at hand then paying due respect to Eric. Eric’s gaze looks back down to Clay, to his unmoving, unflinching face. Eric’s hand moves down to Clay’s jugular, feeling Clay’s heartbeat. Even though it is weaker than Eric would like, Eric hangs to the feeling, to the knowledge that his ~~annoying as hell brother, son, nephew mix that he wouldn't replace if you held a gun to his head~~ operator is still alive.

“Bravo Six! Blondie! Sunshine!” He tries the nicknames that he’s overheard Bravo calling him, praying that something will get Clay to wake up.

Time passes in a paradox, both slow and fast, as Eric continues trying to rouse Clay. He looks up when he hears a noise in the doorframe, and tension bleeds from his body when a paramedic bursts through the door, a gurney trailing him. Frazier helps the other paramedic get the gurney through the door, and he’s followed in by Alpha Two.

The paramedics assess that Clay is okay for transport and that their biggest concern is his headwound. Eric is instructed to hold gauze against the back of Clay’s head, where the bleeding is concentrated ~~and he doesn’t think about how the blood, Clay’s blood, there’s so much blood, on his hands stains the outside of the gauze~~. When the paramedics get him atop a backboard, it’s all Eric can do to keep the pressure on the wound as Derek, Jordan and the two paramedics all lift the board onto the gurney.

Derek and Jordan step away, letting the trio start making their way towards the base’s entrance where the ambulance is parked. A silent communication passes between them, and they storm out in sync, looking for the rest of Alpha. Someone did this to Bravo’s rookie. Clay may be Bravo’s rookie, but he was Tier One’s kid. They've all seen him work, all given him pointers, all taken and given advice. They've seen Bravo take the kid - and he is a kid, the youngest Tier One operator in history - under their wing, and that means that Tier One took him under his wing. Thanks to Clay’s knowledge of languages, there wasn’t a Tier One team who hadn’t utilised the kid’s skills. Some punks on base had hurt their kid. A fellow sailor had hurt their kid.

As they’ve gathered Alpha, they run across Delta, who have finished a couple of late night rounds in the shootout house. Delta One, a formidable man named Tyler Jaramillo, or TJ, takes one look at the stormy faces of Alpha and draws some speedy assumptions.

“Clay?” Behind TJ, Delta perks up, looking away from where they’re ribbing each other.

“Somebody attacked him in the Bravo cages.” Full Metal isn’t one to beat around the bush, especially when their kid is involved. Delta matches Alpha, anger burning and knuckles whitening. The cages are sacred, a place where sailors can decompress in a place that is solely their own. And someone had gone into that room, had attacked one of their own, had hurt him so bad that his commanding officer had needed to call him an ambulance.

“We need to find who did it.” This is a given, but it gives the teams something to focus on. Alpha and Delta both splinter off in their operating pairs, with the intention of finding somebody who had blood on their uniform.

Alpha and Delta’s 2ICs pair up to make their way over to the security room where the cameras are. While the room is unmanned – it’s a base full of sailors trained by millions of taxpayer dollars, why do they need an on-duty security guard – they know how to access the footage. TJ and Metal stay behind to inform Bravo of the situation, on the off chance that Blackburn hadn’t called Jason yet.

Metal makes the call to Jason, and Jason picks up the phone with a tone of irritation, and Metal can hear Jason picking up his car keys before Metal even gets the chance to start speaking. Jason cuts of whatever Metal was about to say – “I know about Clay, I’m going to the hospital right now, and I’m about to call the rest of Bravo.” The dial tone rings out before Metal can get a word in edgeways, not that he needed to anyway.

TJ pulls his phone out of his back pocket, shooting a text to the group chat that has the Tier One Master Chiefs and 2ICs in it. _Spenser was attacked in the Bravo cages. Delta and Alpha on base. Finding who did it._

Metal’s phone buzzes from where he’s putting it in his pocket, but since he watched TJ send the message, he doesn’t bother checking it. They make their way over to their 2ICs in the hope that they’ve found who hurt their rookie.

Sped-up footage of the hallway shows four Green Team trainees entering the room, leaving 10 minutes later, and then Blackburn checking in about 5 minutes after they’d left. The footage is stopped as Jordan entered the frame, a still of his confused face. Derek rewinds it back to the trainees entering the room and manages to get three non-blurred pictures of the trainees, the other one is looking down at the bat he is holding, meaning that they can’t get a good angle of it. TJ and Metal take pictures of the three they manage to get, sending it to their respective groups in the hopes that the images will help to flush out the fourth.

* * *

When Clay battles his way back to consciousness, he sort of wishes he didn’t. Bright lights burn his eyes and his chest feels like someone put an elephant onto it. The weight panics him, and as he manages to open his eyes enough to squint, he can feel his heart rate increase. He’s in hospital, (why is he in the hospital?), and he flinches away as the heart monitor increases in tempo, waking Jason and Sonny from where they're both sleeping by his bedside, in those uncomfortable-as-sin hospital chairs.

Sonny manages to start speaking first – “Hey Bam Bam, you're alright, you're with us, you're okay"

Clay focuses on his face – on the toothpick that moves about as Sonny speaks and tries to calm his breathing. His chest heaves and accentuates the pain that he’s in. He tries to slow his breathing as Jason quietly encourages him – “Sunshine, remember when you told me how to do sniper breathing, can you do sniper breathing for me?”

Trent jogs in, looking mildly panicked, but calms when he sees that Clay’s heart rate returning to a more level value, and his respirations becoming clearer and more evenly spaced.

Clay opens his mouth and tries to talk but his voice is so gravelly it's indecipherable. Sonny offers him a plastic cup of water, and Clay tries not to think about how bad he would have to be for Sonny to be the first to offer comfort. He meets eyes with Trent (“drink slowly kid") and tries again. "How bad?" a pause hangs in the air.

"Concussion," Trent starts, and their medic looks like he's 10 years older than he is, and that he hasn't had a good night of sleep in the past week, which he hadn't. “broken nose, some bruised ribs, and enough bruises that it looks like someone got liberal with a black paintbrush." Clay nods and flinches when it hurts his head. Trent grumbles something about morphine and leaves the room, but as he's passing the foot of the bed, he pats Clay's foot.

Sonny's face, which had been neutral for most of the time he'd been awake, suddenly contorts into a scowl to rival Blackburn. "Blondie?" Clay looks from where he'd been looking through the door at Trent's retreating head and focuses on Sonny, humming in acknowledgement. "Some of the bruises-" he cuts himself off, almost as if he's afraid to scare Clay. Sonny looks over at Jason whose face has joined Sonny's as a scowl, and Clay follows his gaze.

Thankfully, Jason picks up where Sonny left off. "Clay, some of the bruises looked like boots. SEAL standard issue boot prints. Do you remember who attacked you?" Because they know he was attacked, because it was on base, because it was in _their_ cage room, and most of the blood that Clay was lying was inside **Clay's** cage. Because TJ called him about half an hour after Metal had; after Jason had finished calling Bravo about Clay, because TJ had told him that they’d got footage of four Green Team trainees entering the room.

Clay's saved from answering by Eric, who bursts through the door with a fury that Clay doesn't associate with his commanding officer. Eric has his phone in hand and he's – is that blood on his fingers? It’s under his fingernails... Oh god, did Blackburn find him, beaten in his cage? – barely containing rage because his operator was beaten by some candidates. Some punk sailors who thought they'd get a footing in Tier One by damn near killing one of the few people most of the damn Tier would go to J-Bad and back for in a heartbeat. "Alpha and Delta found the guys who hurt you. Found them celebrating plugging the leak in Tier One, thought you were spilling secrets to Ash." Blackburn worries for a moment that Sonny and Jason are about to break the armrests of the chairs they're sat in, from grip strength alone.

Trent comes back with a nurse in tow, and with him comes Brock and Ray, both of whom look worse for wear, and Brock keeps fiddling with the loop on his belt where Cerb's leash usually hands from, even if his eyes are steadily fixed on Clay's face. The nurse asks quietly if he wants morphine, and Clay pauses, looks at Eric’s locked jaw and nods, decisively not looking at his team as the nurse adds a dose to his IV.

~~How did he let himself be beaten by some candidates who hadn't even got into Tier One?~~

"They," his gaze flickers between his brothers, as they look on in anger – not anger at him, never anger at him – “they must have thought I leaked the Saudi water supply mission to my dad". Ray turns around and rests his forehead against a wall, as if another second looking at Clay's body, covered in bandages and bruised past the bandages, would make him kill the candidates. Brock and Trent move forwards as a pair - they were good partners on the field because they sometimes acted like they read each other's mind - and Brock's step puts him between the door and Clay.

Blackburn swears and dials a number, but before he steps out to make the call itself in private, they hear him say "Davis, it's Blackburn." Clay's eyes snap over to Sonny when he takes Clay's hand Sonny is so careful, he's never this careful. Sonny looks into Clay's soul - where did he learn to do that? Brock stares into people's souls, he's got a stare that makes you think he can see everything you've ever done wrong - and Clay can't look away. "Clay, how many of them were there?" In Clay's peripherals, he watches as Sonny's toothpick jumps up and down as he speaks, but the more rational part of his mind registers that that is _not_ the most important thing right now. Clay casts his mind back, thinks about what happened. He'd gone down shamefully easily, but there were four people above him. "Four." Jason leaves - he doesn't do emotions or reassurances very well - to make sure that Alpha and Delta have the right amount of people.

“I-” Clay tries to defend himself, tries to explain why he’d been taken down, “I thought it was one of you, so I didn’t look up.” This shatters their hearts in two. He’d been secure in the knowledge that he was safe, and he’d been attacked in his own cage for it.

Sonny’s grip becomes vice-like for a fraction of a second before it loosens again. He’s going to kill those candidates, and he’s not going to feel a single milligram of regret about it. They’d hurt his kid brother, his best friend, over the suspicion that he might be leaking information. Between Tier One, the bastards would never stand a chance.

Ray had relayed to them that all the Tier’s One and Two’s knew about it and had distributed the knowledge that their kid brother had been beaten, and all of their teams were decidedly Not Happy about it. Alpha, Charlie, Delta and Echo had all expressed wishes to reacquaint the candidates with the barrel of an RPG. Charlie had come as a surprise, but when Beau had explained that Clay had helped them out of some sticky situations as an over-the-phone interpreter, Bravo hadn’t necessarily been surprised.

A part of Trent - the part that has five brothers, the part that has one of those brothers in a hospital bed - wishes for Clay to be wrapped in bubble wrap and never have to be hurt ever again. For him to be kept safe by his family and not have to worry about the stupid things that the sperm donor he calls a father says to implicate him. But that fear, that urge to protect is squashed by the knowledge that their family would keep them safe.

As for those candidates? 29 pissed as hell operators, their COs, and most of the straps that Tier One works with? Those kids would be lucky to see their next sunset.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans begin forming, Blackburn and Clay have as close to a heart-to-heart as they're probably going to get, and we meet Echo.

Lisa is pissed. She has every right to be. Clay had been attacked in the Bravo cages.

She’d watched the kid go from a strap who couldn’t stay in his own lane to an operator who could lead Bravo – and Tier One, for that matter – into the future. And then he’d been attacked in his team’s cages, _in his own cage_. Blackburn was still at the hospital – he’d found the kid in a pool of his own blood; Lisa wouldn’t blame him if it took an apocalypse to separate him from the kid – making sure that the kid got appropriate care.

She pushed open the door to Bravo’s briefing room, not that it actually had any members of Bravo in it. Alpha, Charlie and Delta were all there, waiting on her brief on the situation. Echo would have been there, if not for them being halfway through their first deployment as a team. There had been hesitation about deploying Echo – the loss of the last Echo line-up still sat heavily in the Tier’s mind.

The three team’s Master Chiefs and 2ICs had sat in Bravo’s usual chairs. Full Metal and Derek sat in Jason and Ray’s chairs, respectively. Beau and his second in command had taken Sonny and Trent’s, while TJ was sat in Brock’s. Delta Two had distinctively chosen not to sit in Clay’s seat, instead sitting in a chair usually used for either Cerberus or a support staff member, depending on the op.

~~It was very funny to watch Brock and Clay push a wheely chair with Cerberus on it between the two of them, and they’d pretty much mastered the art of doing it in the last few months. Cerb had found that if he allowed it to happen, he’d get belly rubs and treats, so he was unbothered about it~~

The other seats had a random assignment, seemingly first-come-first-serve. The ones unlucky enough to have not found seats stood tensely, arms crossed and grumbling under their breath to each other.

Nobody sat in Clay’s seat.

All 18 operators looked up when she walked in, attention snapping to the person with the most information. As she walked in, her gaze caught on the table space in front of Clay’s chair. Clay had left his book on the table. It’s about as thick as a brick, and Sonny would probably take a glance at it and tell Clay it was as dry as one. The embossed cover didn’t read English, and Lisa had a feeling that there would be very few, if any, people in the room able to read any part of the book.

She stood at the front and pushed her emotions down. These operators were here for information, not emotion.

“At 0145 this morning, 4 Green Team members entered Bravo’s Cage room. At 0157, they left, and returned to the Green Team barracks. 0204, Lieutenant Commander Blackburn entered the Bravo cages. He dialled 911 and was assisted by Alpha Four-”

She cuts herself off for a few seconds, as various operators slapped Jordan on the back, mumbled thanks spreading through the room as they reassured themselves that one of their own had helped their kid.

“Assisted by Alpha Four at 0207. Ambulance arrived at 0215. The Green Team members were apprehended by Alpha and Delta at 0248.”

She pauses again as a ripple of thanks goes through to room, Alpha and Delta thanking their Master Chiefs and each other and Charlie thanking both teams.

“Petty Officer Spenser was admitted to hospital at 0224, and was assessed as having a concussion, a broken nose and 5 bruised ribs.”

Alpha, Charlie and Delta’s medics all take note of this. They’re probably going to be on Clay’s ass for the next few months about this, right behind Trent.

“Bravo arrived at the Hospital at 0243. They are all with him. Hayes has asked that he is included in any appropriate punishments.”

Full Metal snorts. “Bet he didn’t word it like that”

A series of chuckles and grins echoes around the room. He did not word it like that. There was much more swearing, and much, much less formal language. He’d implied murder no less than 5 times.

Lisa allowed a smile to pass through the stony calm façade she had up.

“Command has delegated these appropriate punishments to be carried out within DEVGRU and have stressed the importance of leaving an impression on future graduates. This cannot be a recuring event.”

TJ pipes up first, almost before she’d finished talking. “I say we let Metal work his magic, make sure nobody finds them.”

This gets mixed responses, but Lisa isn’t surprised when none are wholly negative. They all had a younger brother in the form of Clay, and they had all trained for years in the art of killing their enemies as swiftly and efficiently as possible, and these candidates fell wholly and completely under the title of ‘Enemy’.

Metal gives a faux hopeful look to Lisa, and Lisa can tell that he’s not entirely dismissed the possibility, even as he does a terrible job at pretending to still consider it an option that Lisa could authorize. Lisa plays into the joke – god knows that Tier One needs some light in this disastrous day – and gives him the look mostly used for when Bravo (usually Sonny) suggests a stupid idea that shouldn’t had even crossed their minds. Blackburn jokingly referred to it as her “bad dog” look, and it worked for its purpose, making the operators put their tails between their legs. A few faces form smiles, and a few look to be wavering on the edge of smiling.

“No murder, and no death.”

This gets her grumbles, and not all of them are joking. Clay had gotten all of them out of sticky situations. Every operator in Tier One had a handful story where Clay had needed to be briefed on their op, and all of them had at least one where he’d taking calls at 2am to translate over a connection that he could barely hear English through. He’d never berated them for waking him up, and had often taken time to teach various operators key phrases, if he knew they were deploying somewhere where he knew the language.

Beau goes next, possibly the most level-headed of the Master Chiefs – both in the room and not. “Advanced SERE?”

Now this, Lisa can work with. Something about her posture must change, a twitch in her face, because the room suddenly erupts in sound. Charlie Two, Delta Five and Alpha Three all are in close enough range to clap Beau on the back, and they do so in quick succession.

“Gentlemen.” She raises her voice to be heard by the room. There’s nothing gentle about the looks on their faces.

“I’ll leave you to figure something out. Report to me with a plan of action.” And with that, she gives them a single nod and begins to leave. Her turned back does not block out the whispers of violence, but it does hide the vicious smile that’s stretched itself out along her face.

Nobody would even think about hurting their kid. Ever again.

+

As Clay blearily opened his eyes, he realised that he’d succumbed to pain-med-induced sleep. A few hours had probably passed since then, based on the fact that sunlight was now filling the room. Sonny was sat on his right side, gaze focused on the room’s TV screen, which was showing a play-by-play of a football game. The volume was cranked down, and even as Clay becomes more aware; he can only hear every other word.

“Son?” The word passes his lips without him meaning it to. Sonny’s head snaps over to Clay, so fast that Clay fears he may have given himself whiplash.

“Hey Bam Bam, how ya doin?” ~~The toothpick moves hypnotically. Stop looking at the toothpick. Stop it. Stop it.~~ Sonny’s casual expression is betrayed by the slight waver in his voice, a sliver of raw emotion that Sonny couldn’t fully supress. Clay gives him a strained smile in lieu of answering and reaches his hand out. Sonny catches the hand before it moves very far, holding it in a tight grip.

Sonny’s thumb absently runs across Clay’s ~~unblemished because he hadn’t even been able to fight back~~ knuckles, and his spare hand turns off the TV, leaving them in silence.

“Kid.” Clay’s eyes widen slightly, and he almost pulls his hand out of Sonny’s grip at the softly spoken word. He tries to get in the apology, the explanation, before Sonny can tell him that Jason is punishing him for being unaware.

“I should have being paying attention. I know I should have been paying attention, I was just so tired.” ~~I’m sorry I’m so sorry don’t kick me out please~~

Sonny freezes. _What?_

“Clay. Stop. Stop-” he has to cut himself off before he says something that includes those really touchy-feely-emotions he’s feeling. Thankfully, Clay doesn’t take the pause as an opportunity to continue. “Stop trying to defend yourself. None of us blame you, Blondie. You were on base. You should have been protected. We won’t fail you again.” Sonny gives him facts, because he knows that if he tries to do anything else he’ll make it worse.

“Son?” Clay recalls a voice calling through the dark, through the black water he was floating in, a voice he’d recognised; “Did Blackburn find me? He- he had blood on his hands”

For a moment, Sonny curses Clay’s blessings as a sniper. He’d always been able to notice the little things, the things none of them would notice. “Yeah, he was checking that none of us were sleeping in the cages.”

Clay nods, and then his brows furrow. He breaks eye contact with Sonny and frowns in the genal direction of his feet. His face makes what Sonny calls his ‘Brainiac’ Face, and Sonny can only assume that he’s thinking about what happened with Blackburn, not rationalizing with himself that the beating was somehow his fault.

“Son, can I talk to him?” Sonny doesn’t want to think about whatever that conversation is going to be, so he nods and begins to gather his stuff. His cap is hanging precariously from one on the bed’s corners, his phone on the bedside table. He stands and ruffles Clay’s head, laughing despite the stink-eye he gets for it. Clay doesn’t mind it, and he has the feeling the next few weeks, if not months, are going to be filled with various forms of physical contact to reassure his teammates that

And now he’d asked Sonny to get Blackburn. God what do you even say to the guy who had found you beaten? ‘Hey Boss, I’m sure that what you saw was horrifying, but I’m alright now?’ God help him. Sonny hadn’t given him a weird look, so he’d probably been expecting Clay to ask at some point.

Clay’s train of thought is interrupted when a soft knock sounds on the door. There’s a second of pause before the door opens. Clay can’t think of a time when Blackburn’s looked worse. There are dark circles under his eyes, and a vaguely haunted look in his eyes. His eyes have a red tinge, and Clay can’t tell if that’s from sleep deprivation, or _something else._ His hands are rubbed red and raw, and Clay can tell that Blackburn had taken extra care to get every fleck of blood off his hands. He’s in a jacket that looks too big for him, and Clay suspects that Trent had a hand in that. Since the injured person – Clay – wasn’t someone he could immediately care for, Trent had gone for the next best thing, a shaken Blackburn. Under the jacket, he’s still in his fatigues, and by the time he’s finished the assessment of Blackburn’s top half, he’d moved close and sat down, hiding everything below his waist from Clay’s view.

Blackburn reaches out, putting a palm on Clay’s forearm, Clay’s hand mirrors it on Blackburn’s arm, and tension bleeds from Blackburn’s figure. His shoulders slump slightly, and he leans forward.

“How are you feeling?”

Clay considers lying, considers saying that he’s not in any pain, considers easing Blackburn’s mind. He decides against it. Blackburn had found him in a pool of blood, it’s the least he can do to tell him the truth. “My ribs hurt. But I’m, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you were there.”

Clay is the ~~sometimes literally~~ bleeding heart of Bravo, levelling out Sonny’s emotional constipation, and the admission is the balm of some of the burns on Eric’s soul. Eric leaned forwards, shuffling closer to the bed, trying to hide the blood on his knees. He hadn’t been home to change, a call to his wife at 8am had told her that he wasn’t going to be home for a while. She, like the amazing wife she was, had been understanding, and then grumbled at him to let her sleep. They’d both laughed and exchanged ‘I love you’s before his wife ended the call. Clay didn’t need the stress of knowing that Eric had knelt in his blood. Nobody needs that.

“Gave me quite a scare, gave all of us quite a scare.” Eric doesn’t tell him that he’d spent the last half hour scrubbing his hands raw, that Jason had needed to strong-arm him into the waiting room, that Trent had given him one look and offered up his jacket, that he’d had his head in his hands until Sonny had come into the room and told him that Clay wanted to talk to him. Doesn’t tell him that he’d stood outside for nearly a minute before he’d knocked, that he’d needed to barrel in before he lost the nerve to speak to his operator. He usually prides himself on staying calm, on being collected, but Clay had been attacked in one of the few places on earth that he could honestly and without reservation call home. That scared Eric. If he couldn’t keep his operators safe on base, where would they be safe?

“Davis is talking to command about adding locks to the cage room doors, make sure this doesn’t happen again.” If she wasn’t already talking to command about it, she would be soon.

Clay nods. He shifts and grimaces in pain.

“Do you want me to get a nurse?” It’s a safe question, one that doesn’t involve the emotions in the room.

Clay ignores the lifeline. “I’m alright as I am. Did you get the guys?”

Eric nods. Breaking the news to Bravo had been the highlight of his morning. “Command is letting DEVGRU work out how to punish them.”

Clay grins. “I bet Metal is having fun with that.”

It’s Eric’s turn to smile, and a soft chuckle makes its way out. “Davis is under strict orders to not accept a plan that involves murder. I’m sure Alpha’s disagreeing with that.”

Alpha was most likely to deploy with Bravo, and all were in line with their Master Chief’s ‘Bury-first-questions-second’ policy when it came to Clay. Eric had a feeling it wouldn’t take much convincing to get Delta and Echo behind the plan, and that Charlie would only argue on principle.

Tier One was a brotherhood that didn’t take kindly to injury, as the world would learn.

+

Echo One – Zack Greer – a newly promoted Delta Two, wasn’t a very outgoing man. One and Twos were meant to both complement and contrast each other, a precarious balancing act honed over years of living out of each other’s pockets. TJ had needed a level head, so his Two was calm in the face of crisis.

Echo Two, on the other hand. A Floridian man, Elliot Howe, promoted from Charlie Three, who was under strict orders to never drink unsupervised with Sonny Quinn, lest they empty a bar ~~and then burn said bar to the ground~~. He’d chaffed under Beau’s tight ship, so when the opportunity to move to form Echo had arisen, he was hard pushed to say no.

Together with Echo Three (Alpha Three), Echo Four (Delta Six) and two Green Team graduates as their Five and Six, they’d created a tight brotherhood.

Echo Five, Dan Wilder, a multilingual K9 handler, had initially been lost at DEVGRU, not quite fitting in. He’d reached out to the youngest operator – Bravo Six – in order to get some advice. What he didn’t know at the time is that their languages had overlap. Together with Clay and Ares – his K9 – he’d been able to find someone to practice with.

Echo had long since lost count of how many times Clay had come into their cage room, with a well-loved book, offering it to Dan with a brief explanation of how it would interest him. The book was never in English, and neither was the explanation. For all they knew, Clay could have spent the last few months giving Dan anything from Harry Potter to The Anarchist’s Cookbook ~~he’d actually only given Dan one of those, and Dan was under strict instructions not to tell them which~~ , and Dan had been recommending others back.

Sonny, on the days when they were hanging out after work, sometimes tagged along to these exchanges. He’d joked about a book club, and Echo Two had picked up on the joke immediately, and since then the pair had resigned themselves to the nickname.

Between Clay’s frequent interactions with Dan, and the fact that all of DEVGRU was deadly protective of Clay, it was no surprise that when Echo had heard the news, they hadn’t been happy. Command had fought a battle with Echo to keep them deployed, and Echo had nearly won. Dan had been on many rants, talking to empty space in Pashto – Four only caught a few words, and those were all along the lines of murder and death. Ares was giving out a low, constant growl. Both of the DEVGRU K9s were as protective as their owners, it seemed.

The door to their dorms slammed open and Zack marched in. Echo looks up in sync, and if it weren’t so serious, Zack would be amused by how much his men look like Meerkats. “Got word from Virginia.” This sets his men on edge, Howe half-steps forward, and his shoulders visibly tense up. “They found the green team rookies. We’ve been asked to approve the plan of their punishment before it gets sent to be approved by command.” Malicious smiles break out among the barracks.

They may be 7000 miles away, but they wouldn’t let anybody off the hook because of it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master Chiefs team up, Clay says a bad word, and some Bravo members clean up Clay's cage

Clay feels himself being pulled from unconsciousness by voices and feels like he’s pulling against a bungee cord.

He squints through barely open eyes and sees who’s talking. 4 vague shapes that look a lot like people seem to be the sources of the sound, and there’s a slightly grainy voice as well. His sight gets clearer, and now he can see that-

Uh oh.

Metal, Jace, Beau, TJ all sit around his bed, and Zack is on a video call, and they’re all discussing something that Clay’s mostly-asleep brain can’t figure out. Clay’s open eyes catch TJ’s attention.

“Hey, Kiddo.” This, of course, alerts the others to Clay being awake. The Master Chiefs all look over to Clay, and their concerned looks ease ever so slightly at his somewhat alertness.

This alertness does not last. Clay manages to force out a single word before he slips back into sleep; one that he’d later argue to a grinning Sonny and Trent had summed up the situation of having five of the most deadly SEALs the Navy had to offer all sitting – virtually or not – around his bed.

“Fuck.” His eyes fall closed and he releases whatever hold he had on consciousness, letting the bungee cord bring him back into blissful unawareness. As his consciousness fades, he overhears Metal snorting, a soft chuckle from Jace and Zack laughing in earnest.

* * *

Jason fidgets with his hoodie’s strings as he waits for Beau to arrive with a computer that they could call Zack from. They’d decided that they needed to approve the plan for dealing with the candidates who’d hurt Clay, and for that, all 5 of the Master Chiefs needed to be in agreement. Zack had expressed that he’d wanted to see Clay – he couldn’t have the same physical comfort the others cold from seeing Clay face-to-face, so a video call is the best compromise they could work out – and they’d agreed that the kid’s hospital room would be the best place to have the informal meeting. Beau had argued about it – Jason couldn’t tell if it was on principle or genuine discourse with the idea – since they shouldn’t really have four people in the hospital room. This argument had ended when both TJ and Metal had turned an unimpressed scowl on him.

Jason sits level with Clay’s hip, eyes flickering between the closed door, Clay’s sleeping face, and his slowly rising and falling chest. Across from him, Metal sits faced towards to door, but Jason can tell he’s listening to the monitor as well, drawing comfort from the steady sound, even if the volume of it has been turned down. TJ is sat next to Jason, leaving an empty chair next to Metal ~~they didn’t particularly want Jason and Beau sat together, and really, who would?~~. He’s also facing the door, and Jason is struck by how much they both look like Cerberus when he’s on guard; alert and carefully watching the entrance, but still paying intense attention to the person they’re protecting.

The door opens and Beau walks in, computer tucked under his arm. His jaw works at the sight of Clay’s obvious bruising, but he seems to push it down and walks over to the foot of the bed, where a table that Clay uses as a table to eat food and places the laptop on top of it. He pulls the table closer to set up the video call and knows that Zack is probably being driven up the wall by Howe as he waits for the call to come in. His old Three had driven him up the wall, but he was a damn good operator, and Beau had been happy to pass the ball of chaos off to Echo. The call dials for a few seconds, and then Zack pick up.

He’s muted but the video shows that he’s having a strongly worded discussion with someone off-camera, and Beau would happily put money on it being Howe. TJ leans over to see the screen more clearly, and Beau shoves him away when he puts himself in front of Beau, blocking his view entirely. TJ cracks a grin and Metal does too ~~but in that way that only Metal can do, the one that makes you think that he’s one bad day away from being diagnosed with psychopathy~~ and Beau moves the table back to where all of them can see it, and to where Zack would be able to see him.

Whatever argument Zack was having finishes and he turns back to the computer, clicking whatever button he was using to mute himself, and the background noise starts emitting from the computer’s speakers. Zack opens his mouth to address his peers but his voice catches in his throat. His first good look at Clay, and it is neither good nor bad. A bruise spans his jaw from his chin to his ear, and his nose still looks a touch crocked. There are more injuries under the gown, ones he can’t see, and there are more injuries in his mind, ones that can’t be fixed with surgery or a bandage. He swallows with effort and tries again.

“Mornin’ boys.” It’s barely 6 am for him, but because of the time zones, it’s 8 pm for the rest of them. He’d barely slept, and he suspected the others would join him in uneasy sleep, if any.

He gets a series of grunts in return, and he doesn’t expect much else. He doubts that TJ and Metal got any sleep, returning from night exercises and a spin-out respectively, and strongly doubts that Jason has slept since he got the phone call from Blackburn. Beau was probably the most well-rested of the five, having been informed about Clay’s situation when he’d checked his phone at 7 am that morning.

“We got a plan for them?” His gaze settles on Metal, where he’s on the edge of the frame. Metal is the most likely to have the plan, and one they’d agree was the one the candidates most deserved. He didn’t know their names, not that the names were important. There was a very good chance they’d never set foot in Virginia state ever again, let alone the base.

Metal nods and starts to explain their plan for Advanced SERE, with _slightly fewer_ safety regulations. Metal pauses to give credit where credit is due, explaining that Beau had come up with it, and that his Two and Four had been able to give a list of how Clay had been injured, and the force the candidates had used to put Clay in the hospital. Jason looks up at the ceiling, and his knuckles become white. TJ doesn’t look far behind, gaze fixed on Clay’s heartrate monitor as Metal gruffly explains that they’d used a bat to bruise – nearly break – Clay’s ribs.

Zack nods. His gaze moves to TJ.

“Let them know that Echo would be right there if we could.”

TJ tilts his head just barely, and Zack knows from his time as TJ’s 2IC that TJ would pass on the message to the best of his ability and that there was a lot of ability.

“We figure out the door thing?” Zack would have thought that Jason would have asked this earlier, but he appreciates that he’d waited until all of them were there before he’d asked the question.

“Yeah, your Davis is getting the brass to approve locks as we speak.” This was Beau, and Jason nodded, figuring that their cages would get the same treatment as their briefing rooms, where they needed to use their key cards to enter. If anyone could get that done, it would be Davis.

“How’s everyone holding up?” This is Zack again.

“Annoyed, he’s gotten us out of some tight spots before.” TJ. He looks quite a lot like he’s prepared to murder the candidates, despite whatever promises he’s made to Brass.

“Stressed, he’s a valuable asset.” Zack worries for a moment that Jason is about to jump across the bed and attack Beau, but instead, he just squints across the gap. Beau’s using emotional separation to ensure that he’s not too involved in it, and Jason hopefully acknowledges it. TJ raises an eyebrow at Beau but recognises the strategy from when Zack had to remove his emotions from the equation back when Zack had been his Two. TJ’s gaze goes back to the monitors.

“Their little brother is in hospital.” Metal also looks ready to throttle Beau, but his hand has moved to the air between Beau and Jason, in the hope of blocking Jason in case he attempted to leap across the bed and do something he’d later have to explain to Brass. Zack knows how they feel; thanks to Dan and Clay’s closeness, they’d practically adopted the kid into their ranks, came as Alpha.

Jason just shakes his head, but a verbal response from him isn’t necessary. The kid was basically his son, ~~when Dan had first joined DEVGRU he’d nearly insisted on Clay getting a DNA test, just to make sure that they actually weren’t related~~ and he was deadly protective of his team like they all were.

“Hey, Kiddo.” TJ’s statement breaks the momentary silence. TJ leans forward in his seat, gaze fixed on Clay’s face, which was scrunched up, eyes barely open.

“Fuck.” The word is slightly slurred from sleep, and even as he’s saying it, Clay’s eyes slip back closed and his face goes lax. Metal lets out an amused snort at Clay’s expense. Jace lets out a soft chuckle, a gentle and endearing look on his face. Zack starts laughing, clutching his stomach as he leans forward, a genuine smile on his face for the first time in nearly 14 hours. TJ shakes his head, a soft smile on his face. Only Clay, making 5 Master Chiefs laugh with a single word.

Howe pokes his head through the door as Zack is finishing his fit of laughter, and raises both his eyebrows at his leader, who appeared to be losing his marbles at 6 am.

“Clay, Clay woke up for a second and only said fuck.” Zack explains, then promptly breaks into another fit of laughter. Howe lets out a booming laugh and closes the door again, and Zack faintly hears him repeating the story to whoever is in the room they’ve commandeered as a common room, which spouts at least two other fits of laughter.

* * *

Brock marches through the door to Bravo’s cage room, Trent hot on his heels. Trent had managed to get some information out of Blackburn before he’d been whisked away by his wife; Clay’s cage had been messed up when Blackburn had arrived ~~from the fight, god could it even be counted as a fight, they’d caught him so unaware it might as well be an ambush~~ and they figured that they might as well clean up what they could and put everything back where it should be. It didn’t make it feel any less like an invasion of privacy, any less like they were diving headfirst into the most vulnerable part of Clay.

Cerberus was with them, since when Trent had called Brock he’d been on a walk with Cerb, and the hair missile was a reassurance they both benefited from. Cerb didn’t need his lead when on the base, and when Brock had opened the door, he’d shot in like – no pun intended – a missile. He’d immediately zeroed in on the blank space in front of Clay’s cage. The space had been cleaned, but clearly not enough for Cerberus’ nose, which had found where Clay had been ~~lying in a puddle of his own blood, where Blackburn had knelt in front of him, where Blackburn had begged him to come back to consciousness~~ before he’d been taken to the hospital. He laid down, a low whine sounding out. Brock followed him in, letting to door shut behind them. He knelt next to his dog, scratching him behind the ears as Trent patted Cerb’s back.

Trent rises first, moving towards the cage. It seemed as though the guys who’d attacked Clay had taken the time to tear apart whatever wasn’t bolted down ~~while Clay had been lying, bleeding, on the floor next to them. God, those guys could have graduated to become his brothers, and they’d left Clay bleeding, unmoving, in a puddle of his own blood~~. Various boxes of ammo are strewn across the floor of the cage as if someone had swept an arm to clear the shelf that Clay used for ammo.

~~(They had)~~

Trent knelt and started picking up the boxes, thanking past-Clay for using multicoloured stickers to both mark and seal the boxes – Clay used a couple different types of guns and argued that it was easier to tell apart the ammo when they’re colour-coded, and a pack of coloured circles showed up in his cage the next day – so that he didn’t need to get on his hands and knees to collect scattered bullets.

Photos were flung haphazardly across the cage, landing on and available surface. Photos of Clay and Bravo, of Clay and Cerb, a candid of Echo Five reading one of Clay’s books while in his hammock, another of Clay and Brian in Team Three uniforms. A somewhat blurred photo of Clay and Sonny, taken mid-chase by Ray, where Clay had stolen Sonny’s cowboy hat and was running while holding it to his head, and Sonny was chasing; both had bright grins on their faces. Another of Jason and Clay sat around a campfire – Trent suspected that Emma had taken the photo – roasting marshmallows. In each of them, Clay had a massive smile on his face, showcasing why Bravo called him Sunshine. Trent’s chest tightened looking at them.

Brock stood up, leaving Cerb lying on the floor in front of the cage. He looks down at the partially unpacked spin-out bag that lies abandoned in the corner of Clay’s cage. He kneels down in front of it, silently moving out of Trent’s way as he shuffles about replacing the photos onto Clay’s shelves.

The pair move quietly, under the watchful eyes of Cerb, almost as if they’re afraid that talking in Clay’s cage without Clay there would be too personal.

~~It would, Trent thinks as he carefully puts up the only photo Clay has left of Brian. It would be too invasive, too personal.~~

Trent finishes his job first and walks out to where Cerb is sitting. He sits next to Cerb, waiting for Brock to finish unpacking all of Clay’s bag. A shaking breath escapes him, and he buries his ~~not shaking they’re not shaking please stop shaking~~ hands into Cerb’s fur. Cerb looks up at Trent and his tongue lolls out of his mouth.

Brock pulls Clay’s DEVGRU hoodie out of his bag and refolds it, before putting it on the shelf that Clay reserves for changes of clothes. He spares a glance out to his best friend and his other best friend. Trent and Cerb are looking at each other while Trent pets Cerb, and Trent has a hint of a smile on his face. Now with an empty bag, Brock hangs it on its hook and leaves the cage, softly closing the door behind him.

Brock offers a hand to Trent and pulls him up. Trent pulls Brock into a tight hug, offering reassurance to his younger brother. As much as Brock was a recluse, he also thrived on physical touch, which Cerb usually monopolised. Brock buries his face into Trent’s neck and tightly wraps his hands around Trent, almost as if he’s scared to let go. They stand like this for a while, and Trent begins to softly hum a tune. Cerb barks and stands up, pushing his nose between their legs to push them apart.

Trent feels Brock let out a huff of laughter before pulling away.

“Come on brother, let’s get some dinner before we force Jace to go home.” Brock snorts, turning to Trent with a disbelieving look. Trent raises his eyebrows back, and a silent debate passes between them.

“Fine. But you’re paying. And telling Jace.” Brock concedes after a few seconds of eye contact, and Trent grumbles something that sounds a lot like ‘cheapskate’. Brock jabs him in the ribs and then opens the door for Cerb and Trent, who both exit.

~~(They share the bill)~~

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me in the comments. Kudos, constructive criticism and advice welcome!


End file.
